This dissertation presents a formal theory of Serbo-Croatian grammar. The theory predicts acceptable form/meaning pairs for a substantial chunk of Serbo-Croatian. In particular, we analyze Serbo-Croatian declarative and interrogative main clauses, embedded clauses, a couple of different types of nominal modification, control and predication, as…

This dissertation seeks to refine the meaning of [Torah] in Psalms 1, 19, 37, 40, 78, 89, 94, 105, and 119. Through an exegetical analysis of the nine Psalms that utilize the term, the study argues that [Torah] most frequently refers to the written Pentateuch. Chapter 1 introduces the research question, thesis, and surveys the various approaches…

This article explores the relationship between intuition, introspection and the observation of naturally occurring utterances in linguistic inquiry. Its focus is on the problems that this relationship poses in cognitive approaches to semantics and case theory within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Given the increasing commitment of linguistics…

Using the blocked-translation paradigm with healthy participants, we examined Crutch and Warrington's hypothesis that concrete and abstract concepts are organized by distinct principles: concrete concepts by semantic similarities and abstract ones by associations. In three experiments we constructed two types of experimental blocking (similar…

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of ethical datives (EDs) in two Slavic languages, Russian and Macedonian. EDs are defined through a pragmatic lens as discourse licensed perspective markers in which a dative form expresses a speaker's decision to signal someone's emotional attitude--real or perceived--toward the action. Owing to…

The goal of language comprehension for humans is not just to decode the semantic content of sentences, but rather to grasp what speakers intend to communicate. To infer speaker meaning, listeners must at minimum assess whether and how the literal meaning of an utterance addresses a question under discussion in the conversation. In cases of…

Recent evidence demonstrates that American Sign Language (ASL) signs are active during print word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are highly proficient in both ASL and English. In the present study, we investigate whether signs are active during print word recognition in two groups of unbalanced bilinguals: deaf ASL-dominant and hearing…

Representation of languages in a bilingual mind in general and the way bilinguals restore words from their mental lexicon, and the way they retrieve words have been explored by many researchers resulting in varied findings. The more information regarding bilingual memory is obtained, the better image would be constructed about this knowledge…

Body parts have played an important role in the development of theories describing grammaticalization processes (Heine and Kuteva, 2002, pp. 62-63 and 165-171). Within Uralic linguistics, this particular area of study has not yet received a great deal of attention, although the agglutinative character of most of these languages is known to have…

Transitivity has been extensively researched from a semantic point of view (e.g., Hopper & Thompson, 1980). Although little has been said about a prototypical intransitive construction, it has been suggested that verbs that denote actions with an agent and a patient/theme cannot be intransitive (e.g., Guerssel, 1985). However, it has been…

This dissertation focuses on the French word "propre" roughly meaning "characteristic-of" and corresponding to English "own" found in "her own thesis." This adjective makes extremely varied and complex contributions to the meaning and properties of sentences it occurs in. The present work addresses the…

We describe a leaky competing accumulator (LCA) model of the lexical decision task that can be used as a response/decision module for any computational model of word recognition. The LCA model uses evidence for a word, operationalized as some measure of lexical activity, as input to the "YES" decision node. Input to the "NO" decision node is…

Several studies have shown that concepts spread activation to words of both of a bilingual's languages. Therefore, a central issue that needs to be clarified is how a bilingual manages to restrict his speech production to a single language. One influential proposal is that when speaking in one language, the other language is inhibited. An…

We present data from an artificial language domain that suggest new contributions to the theory of syntactic triggers. Whether a learning algorithm is capable of matching the achievements of child learners depends in part on how much parametric ambiguity there is in the input. For practical reasons this cannot be established for the domain of all…

Research on textual enhancement (TE) has given rise to several factors that may play a role in generating learners' noticing of target forms, one of which pertains to the nature of the target form(s). In particular, results have suggested that learners are more likely to notice more meaning-bearing forms than less meaning-bearing forms.…